


red balloons

by crickets



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-30
Updated: 2010-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:12:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets





	red balloons

It's true that the world somehow manages to work its way back to something that seems at least half normal.

 _Eventually_.

It's autumn when it finally happens, and the first thing Echo does is set off to find him.

Alpha's old compound is still standing, somehow avoiding the same looters and vandals that have ravaged a smattering of run-down buildings just a few miles back on the road. Echo smiles as she hops the enclosure. He always did have a knack for knowing where to hide things -- where they'd be kept safe. She tries to remember all of his hidey holes, the ones she knows about at least -- places where he might keep something he wants to come back for again someday. She runs her fingers along the floor beneath his bed until she finds the release.

There, beneath the floorboards, among the papers and the trinkets, she finds what it is that she came for: an address.

\--

Back at the farm Priya offers to go with her, tells her that Tony's worried for her. But Echo just shakes her head, won't even hear of it.

"You've got a family," she says, and that's that.

Even with civilization in its rebuilding stage, traversing state lines isn't as easy as it once had been and it takes her a couple of weeks to make it into Montana.

She needs to see his face. She needs too look into his eyes and find recognition there. Because the truth is that losing Alpha just might mean losing the one person who truly knows her. And after all she's been through, she's not going to believe that that's gone until she sees it with her own two eyes.

He's out in the barn when she finds him, tack swung over his shoulder, a heavy brown jacket buttoned once in the middle. She can even see dirt caked under the edge of his nails from where she stands. He looks like someone who's lived here his whole life, here among the horses and cattle. He looks like somebody she's never met.

 _Still, she has to try._

"Hey," Echo says, her voice almost a whisper.

 _He looks at her._

\--

A few nights in, Echo lies, warm in his arms. She reminds herself to call Priya the next morning, to tell her she's staying longer than expected, but the thought gets lost with the feeling of his fingers tracing down her spine.

"It's Halloween tomorrow," he tells her. "No trick or treat of course. Governor says it's not safe enough yet." He speaks of the shaky government that's still almost non-existent in most parts of the country. "But if we drive into town we can probably stop by the carnival they're running, get some candied apples, ride some rides."

Echo hates Halloween. Or at least, the _idea_ of it. Something about pretending to be somebody else just doesn't hold the same fascination as it once may have.

"We don't have to dress up," Alpha says, as if reading her mind. "We can just go as ourselves."

"Ourselves." She says the word with a hint of awe as she nods, twines her fingers in his. "That sounds nice."

\--

Echo never really mourns the person she used to be. The person she is? The people she's lost? Sure. But right now she feels whole. She feels complete. And that is worth everything.

 _To her._

Alpha holds her hand as they stand in line for a game involving red balloons and tiny stuffed dogs, and she thinks in some ways they are lucky. Most of these people will never remember the truth about what happened. Many of them have lost time, friends, family. And they don't even know it.

"Where'd you get the balloons?" she can hear someone asking the game-runner. In this new world, some things are rarer than others.

Like she and Alpha. They're different. They remember everything. And that, she supposes, is not a curse after all.

It's a gift.


End file.
